Coal country afraid Trump will repeal black lung benefits with Obamacare
Tyra Johnson grew up in coal country. She was never a miner, but she feels a part of the "tribe."
Her childhood memories are filled with trains laden with coal. They passed right through her hometown of Beattyville, in eastern Kentucky. She recalls how the trains were so loud that the Sunday preacher had to pause his sermon until they rumbled by.
Today those coal trains are mostly a memory. Kentucky had 35,000 mining and logging jobs in 1990. Now there are only 11,000. It's a similar trend nationally. Over two-thirds of the coal jobs have disappeared since the late 1980s.
"We will put our miners back to work," President Trump proclaimed last week as he signed executive orders to encourage more use of coal (and other fossil fuels), rolling back President Obama's initiatives to stop climate change and global warming.
But the people of Beattyville -- and the hills around it -- aren't all cheering Trump's recent actions. There's a deep rift in the area about whether it's wise to bring back the coal jobs. People worry about what it will do to tourism, the land and their health. Some see coal as a job of the past, not the future.
"We need to bring back tobacco and coal," says Johnson, who is now a 39-year-old mom with curly brown hair, but she doesn't want her children working in it. She pushed her eldest to go to college. She also drinks bottled water because she suspects the local water is tainted.
Johnson is equally quick to acknowledge that some of the only jobs coming to eastern Kentucky lately are in tourism. About 120,000 people in Kentucky were employed in "leisure and hospitality" jobs in 1990. Today that's up to 190,000 jobs. In fact, some of the old mining and logging roads are now hot tourist destinations.
"You can drive ATVs [all-terrain vehicles] right through the caves," she says with pride.
The landscape is everything to the people of eastern Kentucky. They feel tied to it and want to talk about its rolling hills, rivers and natural bridges.
Coal jobs versus tourism
Tyra Johnson of Beattyville, Kentucky, wants jobs to return to her town.
"I just love this area," says Tyler Chrisman, a 27-year-old who never wants to leave, despite the economic challenges.
Bringing back coal here means the return of strip mining, a practice of blowing up the tops of mountains. Chrisman sees coal as the past. He's glad that places like "Happy Top," a former strip mine on one of the hills outside town, is now a park.
"I think our community should focus more on eco-tourism rather than destroying the mountains and blasting the mountains away trying to get coal and polluting our streams," says Chrisman.
Chrisman has a unique perspective. He actually worked in the fossil fuel industry. Right after graduating high school, he joined a small oil drilling company owned by his grandfather. He earned $15 an hour pumping oil. It was the best paying job he's ever had.
But when his grandfather sold the business, Chrisman started working in Kentucky's burgeoning tourism industry where he learned to rock climb and rappeling. Today, he earns $9 as a guide at an adventure park. It's the best job he's ever had, he says, and he'd never go back to drilling.
Tyler Chrisman used to work in a oil field in Kentucky, but he doesn't want the coal and oil jobs back. He'd rather see his town grow tourism and rock climbing.
Beattyville Mayor John Smith, a staunch Republican and Trump supporter, also has his doubts about the return of coal or oil drilling to this part of the country.
"I think we need to look at something a little bit different," Smith told CNNMoney.
He's most excited about an internet company called Teleworks USA that came to Beattyville a year ago in a partnership with the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, which tries to retrain people.
Teleworks has created about 80 jobs by training people to handle customer service calls from their homes. The jobs pay around $9 an hour, lower than the energy jobs once did, but significantly higher than Kentucky's minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
Smith isn't alone in having doubts about a big return of coal. Energy experts -- and even some coal company executives -- say there's no way the coal jobs are coming back. Other forms of energy like natural gas are cheaper and cleaner than coal.
Coal employment "can't be brought back to where it was before the election of Barack Obama," said Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, the largest U.S. private coal miner.
The future of coal country
The one remaining mining company on Beattyville's Main Street, Sturgeon Mining Co., didn't return CNNMoney's calls, but the owner told The Guardian in 2015 that there's "no future" in coal and he was trying to get out of the business.
"These are not dumb people [in Beattyville]. Despite what people think, the people back here understand reality," says Chuck Caudhill, the general manager of the local paper, The Beattyville Enterprise. He predicts only a few strip mines will return, if that.
Patricia "Trish" Cole, an EMT in the area, really doesn't want to see coal return. Her uncle got hurt in the mines and she treats a lot of people with black lung disease. Coal companies are still paying various severance payments to families and towns in Appalachia for clean up and care.
"I grew up on a farm. We burned coal. I know how nasty it is," says Cole. "We haul people on the ambulances that have black lung."
The coal severance money even helped pay for a museum -- the Three Forks Historical Center -- in town. It's a treasure trove of war and frontier life memorabilia that has a 4.5 star rating on Trip Advisor. Many visitors are blown away by the small town's collection, which includes a flag that flew at Pearl Harbor.
"I don't think too highly of the coal," says Bob Smith, who oversees the museum and personally collected many of the items in it. He and his wife drew up plans for a massive outdoor pavilion. They dream the area could become a bluegrass music hub, but the project never got funded under Obama.
Bob Smith stands in the Three Forks Historical Center, a museum in Beattyville, Kentucky.
One of the most buzzing places in Beattyville is a local coffee shop, The Art Factory. It feels like something right out of a hip neighborhood in Brooklyn, except the prices are a fraction of what they would be in New York City. There's a large map on the wall where visitors are encouraged to put thumb tacks marking where they come from. There are pins from all over the world.
It's a reminder that Appalachia is starting to be known for a lot more than coal and oil.
"When a lot of rock climbers come and see this area, they want to live here," says Steve Mays, judge, executive in Lee County, of which Beattyville is the county seat. "This is some of the most beautiful areas you will ever see."
Mays is a big fan of Trump's, but he cautions the president to be careful on the environment.
"I'm not saying throw everything away. There's a balance there" between jobs and the environment, he says.
--CNN's Matt Egan, Poppy Harlow, Haley Draznin and Jeff Simon contributed to this report.
CNNMoney (New York)First published April 5, 2017: 6:32 AM ET
WhatsApp privacy policy: SC refers matter to Constitution
The Supreme Court today referred social media platform WhatsApp’s privacy policy matter to a Constitution bench, which will hear the issue on April 18, saying it concerns the larger issue of privacy and right to personal liberty.
A bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justice D Y Chandrachud said when the matter deals with public at large, it becomes a constitutional issue.
“We are referring the matter to a five-judge Constitution bench. It is an issue which concerns the larger issue of privacy and Article 21 of the Constitution. When it concerns the public at large, it becomes a constitutional issue,” it said.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for one of the parties, said they have succeeded in the Delhi High Court and it was purely a contractual issue which does not need hearing by a Constitution bench.
“You should raise the issue before the Constitution bench on April 18 and formulate the issues for hearing,” the judges said.
The appeal filed in the apex court by Karmanya Singh Sareen and Shreya Sethi assailed the high court verdict on the ground that no relief was granted for data shared by users post September 25, 2016 and it amounted to infringement of fundamental rights under Article 19 (Freedom of Speech and Expression) and 21 (Right to Life) of the Constitution.
The counsel appearing for the petitioner said that a new WhatsApp policy which enabled it to the share user’s information with social networking site Facebook, not only hampers privacy under Article 21 but also the freedom of speech under Article 19 of the Constitution.
The apex court had earlier indicated that the issue might come up for hearing before a Constitution bench during the summer vacation which commences from May 11.
On January 16, the court had sought response from the Centre and telecom regulator TRAI on a plea that privacy of over 157 million Indians has been infringed by social networking sites — WhatsApp and Facebook — for alleged commercial use of personal communication.
The Delhi High Court had earlier restrained WhatsApp, an instant messaging application, from sharing with Facebook the user information existing upto September 25, 2016 when its new privacy policy came into effect.
The high court, in its verdict in September last year, had directed WhatsApp to delete the information/data of persons who opted out of the service before September 25, 2016 and not to share it with Facebook or its group companies.
The high court had also directed the Centre and the TRAI to examine the feasibility of bringing the functioning of Internet messaging applications like WhatsApp under statutory regulatory framework.
WhatsApp had earlier informed the high court that when a user account is deleted, the information of that person is no longer retained on its servers.
( Source – PTI )
One in 10 deaths around the world is caused by smoking, according to a major new study that shows the tobacco epidemic is far from over and that the threat to lives is spreading across the globe.
There were nearly one billion smokers in 2015, in spite of tobacco control policies having been adopted by many countries. That number is expected to rise as the world’s population expands. One in every four men is a smoker and one in 20 women. Their lives are likely to be cut short – smoking is the second biggest risk factor for early death and disability after high blood pressure.
The researchers found there were 6.4m deaths attributed to smoking in 2015, of which half were in just four populous countries – China, India, USA, and Russia.
Major efforts to control tobacco have paid off, according to the study published by the Lancet medical journal. A World Health Organisation treaty in 2005 ratified by 180 countries recommends measures including smoking bans in public places, high taxes in cigarettes and curbs on advertising and marketing.
Between 1990 and 2015, smoking prevalence dropped from 35% to 25% among men and 8% to 5% among women. High income countries and Latin America – especially Brazil which brought in tough curbs on tobacco – achieved the biggest drops in numbers of smokers.
But many countries have made marginal progress since the treaty was agreed, say the authors of the study from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in the US. And although far more men smoke than women, there have been bigger reductions in the proportions of men smoking also, with minimal changes among women.
Senior author Dr Emmanuela Gakidou said there were 933m daily smokers in 2015, which she called “a very shocking number”. The paper focused only on those who smoke every day. “The toll of tobacco is likely to be much larger if we include occasional smokers and former smokers and people who use other tobacco products like smokeless tobacco. This is on the low end of how important tobacco is,” she told the Guardian.
There is much more that needs to be done, she said. “There is a widespread notion that the war on tobacco has been won but I think our evidence shows that we need renewed and sustained efforts because the toll of smoking in 2015 is much larger than most people would think, so we absolutely have a lot more to do. We need new and improved strategies to do it and a lot of effort and political will.”
Traditionally there have been far fewer women smoking around the world than men, but it was a huge problem for both, she said.
“There are some really worrisome findings – for example in Russia female smoking has increased in the last 25 years significantly. There are also some western European countries where about one in three women are smoking. So it is true globally that a lot fewer women smoke than men but there are some countries where it is a big problem for women,” she said.
Dr Kelly Henning of Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is committed to tobacco control and co-funded the study with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said: “I think the study highlights the fact that the work is not finished on tobacco. The good news is the decline in daily smoking among men and women ... however there are still many smokers in the world and there is still a lot of work to do. I think we have to keep our eye on the issue and really do more.”
Countries with some of the highest death tolls such as China and Indonesia “really don’t need those health problems - they have so many other issues they are trying to address. But tobacco control is critically important in those places,” she said.
“China has more than a million deaths a year from smoking related diseases and China is only beginning to see the effects of their high male smoking rate. That is only one instance of what is expected to become an extremely major epidemic,” she said.
Writing in a linked comment, Professor John Britton from the University of Nottingham said: “Responsibility for this global health disaster lies mainly with the transnational tobacco companies, which clearly hold the value of human life in very different regard to most of the rest of humanity.” British American Tobacco, for instance, sold 665bn cigarettes in 2015 and made a £5.2bn profit.
“Today, the smoking epidemic is being exported from the rich world to low-income and middle-income countries, slipping under the radar while apparently more immediate priorities occupy and absorb scarce available human and financial resources,” he writes. “The epidemic of tobacco deaths will progress inexorably throughout the world until and unless tobacco control is recognised as an immediate priority for development, investment, and research.”
David Dickinson posted: " Been missing the evening planets? Currently, Saturn and Venus rule the dawn, and Mars is sinking into the dusk as it recedes towards the far side of the Sun. The situation has been changing for one planet however, as Jupiter reaches opposition this we"
Jupiter from January 7th, 0217. Image credit and copyright: Fred Locklear.
Been missing the evening planets? Currently, Saturn and Venus rule the dawn, and Mars is sinking into the dusk as it recedes towards the far side of the Sun. The situation has been changing for one planet however, as Jupiter reaches opposition this week.
Jupiter in 2017
Currently in the constellation Virgo near the September equinoctial point where the celestial equator meets the ecliptic in 2017, Jupiter rules the evening skies. Orbiting the Sun once every 11.9 years, Jupiter moves roughly one zodiacal constellation eastward per year, as oppositions for Jupiter occur about once every 399 days.
As the name implies, "opposition" is simply the point at which a planet seems to rise "opposite" to the setting Sun.
At opposition 2017 on Friday, April 7th, Jupiter shines at magnitude -2.5 and is 666.5 million kilometers distant. Jupiter just passed aphelion on February 16th, 2017 at 5.46 AU 846 million kilometers from the Sun, making this and recent oppositions slightly less favorable. An April opposition for Jupiter also means it'll now start to occur in the southern hemisphere for this and the next several years. Jupiter crosses the celestial equator northward again in 2022.
The path of Jupiter through 2017. Image credit: Starry Night.
Can you see Ganymede with the naked eye? Shining at magnitude +4.6, the moon lies just on the edge of naked eye visibility from a dark sky site... the problem is, the moon never strays more than 5' from the dazzling limb of Jupiter. Here's a fun and easy experiment: attempt to spot Ganymede through this month's opposition season, using nothing more than a pair of MK-1 eyeballs. Then at the end of the month, check an ephemeris for greatest elongations of the moon. Any matches?
With binoculars, the first thing you'll notice is the four bright Galilean moons of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. At about 10x magnification or so, Jupiter will begin to resolve as a disk. With binoculars, you get a very similar view of Jupiter as Galileo had with his primitive spy glass.
At the telescope eyepiece at low power you can see the main cloud bands of Jove, the northern and southern equatorial belts. Shadow transits and eclipses of the Jovian moons are also fun to watch, and frequent for the innermost two moons Io and Europa. Orbiting Jupiter once every seven days, transits of Ganymede are less frequent, and outermost Callisto is the only moon that can "miss" Jupiter on occasion, as it does this year until transits resume in 2020.
Jupiter an the Great Red Spot from January 29th, 2017. Image credit and copyright: Efrain Morales.
Jupiter's one of the best planets for imaging: unlike Venus or bashful Mars, things are actually happening on the cloudtops of Jove. You can see smaller storms come and go as the Great Red Spot make its circuit once every 10 hours. Follow Jupiter from sunset through sunrise, and it will rotate just about all the way around once. Strange to think, we've been using modified webcams to image Jupiter for over a decade and a half now.
Jupiter and Io from 2006. Photo by author.
The major moons of Jupiter cast shadows nearly straight back as seen from our vantage point near opposition. After opposition, the shadows of the moons and the planet itself begin to slide to one side and will continue to do so as the planet heads towards quadrature 90 degrees east of the Sun. In 2017, quadrature for Jupiter occurs on July 5th as the planet sits due south for northern hemisphere observers at sunset. Distances to Jupiter vary through opposition, quadrature and solar conjunction, and Danish astronomer Ole Rømer used discrepancies in predictions versus actual observed phenomena of Jupiter's moons to make the first good estimation of the speed of light in 1676.
Double shadow transits are also interesting to watch, and a season of double events involving Io and Europa begins next month on May 12th.
Jupiter will rule the dusk skies until solar conjunction on October 26th, 2017.
It's also interesting to note that while the Northern Equatorial Belt has been permanent over the last few centuries of telescopic observation, the Southern Equatorial Belt seems to pull a disappearing act roughly every decade or so. This last occurred in 2010, and we might just be due again over the next few years. The Great Red Spot has also looked a little more pale and salmon over the last few years, and may vanish altogether this century.
Finally, the Full Moon typically sits near a given planet near opposition, as occurs next week on the evening of April 10/11th.
Jupiter, the Moon and Spica on the evening of April 10th. Credit: Stellarium.
The next occultation of Jupiter by the Moon occurs on October 31st, 2019.
Don't miss a chance to observe the king of the planets in 2017.
- Here's a handy JoveMoons for Android and Iphone for planning your next Jovian observing session.
-Be sure to check out our complete guide to oppositions, elongations, occultations and more with our 101 Astronomical Events for 2017, a free e-book from Universe Today.
